It’s a crazy world we live in. Just few weeks ago in Sweden, home to the band this review is about, suffered an apparent terrorist attack when a 39 year-old Uzbekistan man rammed a stolen beer truck into a crowd of shoppers outside a department store. Four people were killed and fifteen more were seriously injured during the Stockholm attack. Before discussing Velvet Insane’s music I would just like to take a moment to say to our Scandinavian brothers and sisters that our thoughts are with you during this tragic incident and that we stand in solidarity and unite with you in strength. 

So, with that being said, please allow me to point out that I believe that there is crazy, and then there is crazy. In other words, bad crazy such as terrorist attacks, and good crazy, like the music Velvet Insane has recorded and collected on “Velvet Insane” (Garden Of Sweden Records), their self-titled new release. It goes into so many directions it’s a bit nutty, but nutty in an interesting kind of way. And you either have to be crazy, in a good kind of way, as well as brave to take so many chances on one compilation, but that’s just what Velvet Insane does. By the end of the album it all works out rather well.

From heavier tracks like “Break Out Of Eden”, “Help Me”, “Nottingman” and “King Of The Foolish”, to modern rock radio standards such as “High On Love”, “My Way Of Life Is You” and “Infinity”, then more mellow offerings such as “Coffee, Jazz And Arts”, “Lincoln Road” and the oft times soaring ballad called “Six Steps Away”, these guys run the gambit. The sequencing of the songs lends a nice overall conceptual vibe to their work and the production is clean cut and devoid of the overused bells and whistles employed in too many of today’s recordings. Enough is exactly enough, isn’t it?

“Velvet Insane” clocks in with a total of eleven tracks and leaves you feeling comfortably sated and not so overly full or underfed as when some artist and labels stuff so much on one record you would almost expect to discover that proverbial kitchen sink before the completion of the last cut. As any golden haired girl who goes around messing with bears would tell you; Just right beats the heck out of too much, too little, too hot or too damned cold any day of the week in any old freaking forest. When you get it just right, the way Velvet Insane has on “Velvet Insane”, well, you just don’t need anymore.

A tip of my hat also is due toward this Nordic quartet of rockers because these boys are not just a nest of studio rats, you know, the kind of musicians who record all the time but rarely set foot on stage to perform. These lads are globetrotting troopers. Without the support and funds behind them usually afforded major label mooks they’ve loaded up their gear and done shows on just about every continent a schoolteacher could point out on a map and make you memorize. The courage and wanderlust is strong in these ones. And that my loyal music loving friends, is good!

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